List of access keys

How to link to the New Zealand Legislation website

The PCO welcomes and encourages linking to the New Zealand Legislation website. Links can be made freely and without seeking permission. Rather than posting copies of Acts, Legislative Instruments, Bills, or Supplementary Order Papers on other websites, we strongly recommend that instead you provide a link to the New Zealand Legislation website.

The advantage of linking is that you provide legislation from an up-to-date and authoritative source. It also avoids having legislation on websites in PDF or other formats that do not comply with the New Zealand Government Web Standards.

Note that, while links to Acts and Legislative Instruments are stable, links to the "latest" version of a Bill may break if the subsequent version of that Bill is split into more than one Bill. Links made to earlier versions of a Bill will remain stable, however.

How to link

Each link has three parts:

the website URL: http://www.legislation.govt.nz/

the schema that uniquely identifies the document

the required landing page.

Identifying schema

The basis for linking is a schema that uniquely identifies each legislative document. This schema consists of:

the Resource Management Act, a public Act, number 69 of 1991, is identified by:act/public/1991/0069/

the District Courts Rules 1992 (SR 1992/109) are identified by:regulation/public/1992/0109/

If you are unsure of the number, you will find it on the New Zealand Legislation website (it appears next to the document name on relevant search and browse results pages, and on the contents page for each document).

Landing pages

To specify the landing page, choose from:

The HTML contents page

latest/contents.html

This takes users to the contents page for a legislative document - the method we recommend for most purposes. The page is quickly downloaded, and provides all navigation options.

The Versions and amendments page (or Versions and SOPs for a Bill)

latest/versions.aspx

The Versions and amendments page for an Act or Legislative Instrument lists, and links to, amendments not yet added, all versions available for that item of legislation, and amendments incorporated in the version. The versions page for an Act also lists, and links to, related Bill information (if applicable).

For a Bill, the Versions and SOPs page lists, and links to, the following if applicable: versions of the Bill, Acts from the Bill, related Bills, Acts from related Bills, and related SOPs.

The View whole page

latest/whole.html

This takes users to the entire legislative document on a single HTML page. For larger documents, eg Income Tax Act 2004, accessing this page may take some time and use a large amount of bandwidth.

Individual provisions

Note that the PCO does not recommend linking to individual provisions, because legislative documents are continually being amended. When a legislative document is amended and republished, links to provisions within the document can become invalid.

Individual provisions are identified within the website by a unique, randomly generated ID. It is possible to create a link to an individual provision, by navigating to it and using the URL displayed in the browser as the basis for the link. However, the link may become invalid if, for example, the provision is later repealed.